


Hoping Beyond Hope

by Macksayev



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:36:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macksayev/pseuds/Macksayev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the prompt about Sandor dying: ‘As Sandor lay feverish along the Trident, he imagines Sansa is there with him and he tells her all the things he wanted to in KL but never did.’</p><p>Diverts from the prompt a bit, but same concept. Sandor lays dying and thinks of Sansa, of what she has been to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hoping Beyond Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This one jumped into my head while I was out-lining the next chapters for The Stark's Hound and I had to just type it out.
> 
> It's not really a shipping story since this is Sandor's one sided thoughts about her, but I just love Sansan so yeah.
> 
> I tried to put myself in Sandor's head while he was mired in Kings Landing with all the lurking doom that it entailed.
> 
> Unbetaed, feel free to help me out if you find a typo! Comments and such are appreciated!!! <3

It was cold. He wished for numbness and his own demise but instead was cold and in so much pain.

He'd begged the little wolf-bitch to end him, to put the dagger in his heart and end the suffering. Yes, the last few hours suffering had been nearly unbearable but he'd meant all of it. His whole thrice-damned life had been suffering.

He supposed as a child he must have known some measure of happiness because he'd found the last 20 or so years since he'd been forcibly disfigured were miserable in comparison.

Or mayhap that was how life was after childhood had been cast aside.

The only thing to challenge that belief in him had been her. Little bird. She was the only unblemished thing he'd looked upon in this bloody, dirty, piece of shit world. She is the anti-thesis to everything in his life. Where he is dark and wretched she is bright and fortunate. She is gentle and soul crushingly feminine.

The first time he caught her eyes while travelling down the King's Road from Winterfell he let himself believe for one buggering moment that her gaze wasn't the same as every other sodding person in existence- born of some morbid curiosity or disgust or even horrified pity. She looked like the Maiden made flesh for true. Skin so fair and delicately colored, hair so firey and bright standing out against the dullness of everything that she shone brighter than. The moment of foolish cunt-strucken optimism was slain when he met her eyes and she cast hers quickly away in fear. The Dog remembered his place then.

He remembered watching her walking the soon-to-be damned direwolf- named so stupidly tame for such a beast- watching as she froze under the glare of Ilyn Payne, the silenced executioner. He is unable to quell the foolish need to "save" her and quickly finds out what a stupid little girl she truly is.

The toxic roiling emotions for her started there. So fair yet so empty-headed. He is one moment scornful of her naivete in the face of danger and the next yearns to throw his over-large calloused body over hers to protect her.

He wants to open her eyes, take away the rose colored glass she views life through, wants to make her straighten her spine and cast the bright feathers off for the red pelt she was born under.

She is the Little bird with a jarring duality- so beautiful to look upon but so dimwitted and timid. She is the Stark that least fits her name- Winter is Coming and the Little bird flies south and denies her heritage for braving the literal and figurative cold that it brings.

He is surprised when the Wolf inside of her would raise its hackles out of no where. Everytime he thought her broken she seemed to remind him of her fangs.

On the walkway near the heads of her house and her father- she harshly bites that it might be that her King-in-the-North brother might gift Joffrey's head to her and then the sheer hatred in her eyes that Sandor knows too well. The hatred and need to kill. He remembers putting himself in front of her, dabbing at her bloodied lip.

He scoffs at the memory now- he wanted to open the Little bird's eyes yet he still stopped her from killing, from soiling her innocent hands. Or maybe he didn't want her to die as well.

As time went on he noticed with more frustration and more shameful arousal that her gowns became more and more ill-fitting. She was more like to burst from the seams before they gave her new dresses. Spending money on a traitor's daughter didn't make any sense, he assumed.

The increasing urge to have her angers him on a level that he has not probed until lying beside the Trident, dying slowly. So slowly.

His animal need for her reminds him of his brother. A little voice in his head, the quietest little voice, it says that he never gave into that urge, so how can he compare himself to Gregor? He finds his subconscious raging at the little voice.

The savagery of some of his thoughts of her speak enough about the Clegane house without him needing to act on them.

He remembers combating the demands of his body and mind with anger and snarled words hurled at the girl. She was forever flinching and cringing and shying away from him. It was for the best. The responses he got from her put him in his place again. The Dog was not worthy of The Maiden.

The little voice rears its head again and tries to remind the Dog that he did not enjoy the Little bird being bared for the court. It hurt him in a place that he had not felt such an ache in many years.

He gave her his cloak that day.

The very absurd thought of being her Lord Husband brings a shaky laugh rasping from his mouth, stealing some of his dwindling Life's breath with it.

She broke him the night of the Battle of the Blackwater.

Of course the battle rattled him, unhinged him, helped him shake off the forced mantle of Kingsguard, the forced mantle of Loyal Lannister Dog. But she broke him completely.

He is frightened for the first time in years by the green flames swallowing everything. It drives him away from the fighting.

It drives him to the only thing that feels good and pure to him. Her. Her chambers. They are empty, which he should have expected. It is enough just to be where she usually resides. Where her sweet smell still lingers.

When she arrives it is some small extra present, and the flagons of wine start to overpower the careful control that had been shattered by green fire on the water.

He wants her. He doesn't know which way, he just wants her.

She chooses to stay in the gilded cage. She is scared. Another tick against the Little bird who will not become the Wolf. Who will not face Winter with her head up and shoulders back. Of course she still fears the Dog standing before her.

He is pulled in many different directions but the negative feelings overpower any noble or honorable trait in him as they always had and he finds himself pinning her small frame below his on her bed, dagger at her throat. The desire courses through him and he feels it is fine if it replaces his blood, if it burns away everything else inside of him to give her all of the overwhelming screaming feelings inside of him.

So he tells her to sing for her life. For a hysterical moment he calmly thinks that he will end her life so she won't have to suffer at the hands of Stannis or whoever wins this battle. He will cut her open and watch the goodness and beauty and the gentleness and the frailness rush from her until there is nothing else. And then he will follow her.

But when she opens her mouth and the words come out it is not the Fool and his Cunt. It is his salvation and his redemption and his forgiveness. It is hope. It is tomorrow.

He feels relief for the first time in so many years. It rushes through him and from his eyes.

He will go. He will find something else. Anything else to be.

He will not force her and he hopes in a way that someday she may look upon the memory of him with judicial favor.

He has not been good to her, no, but he has been better than any other in this hive of blood thirsty beasts. That must mean something for a Dog to treat a Little bird who was meant to be feasted upon better than expected. It must mean something that the Hound did not give in to his dark temptations as expected of a Clegane. The little voice chirps this at him and it is her voice. And his voice. The voice of hope.

He leaves her his bloody, muddied, burnt, disgustingly non-white cloak.

He laughs again at himself for the symbolism that is and is not attached to it.

Mayhap the Little bird will be struck with some girl's fancy at it and pretend that he was more honorable and more comely and more whole someday. Mayhap she will imagine a kiss.

He rode off into the green tinted night hoping beyond hope that the Little bird will be safe, though it is an empty hope. He knows just who and just what is behind him.

He lets himself drift into unrestful sleep hours later thinking on the woman she could become. That she should become. It was hope.

And now it is his hope slowly flowing out of him, pooling around him as a grim reminder that he had little left to give.


End file.
